1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to data processing systems. More specifically the present invention relates to a computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer program product for performing the functions of a PCI Express feature card remotely from the point-of-sale system unit.
2. Description of the Related Art
Point-of-sale (“POS”) terminals, such as cash registers, are used in a wide variety of retail businesses such as a supermarket, a convenience store, or the like, for performing such processes as calculating the total price of a purchase (goods or services) and calculating the amount of change due to a customer. Some point-of-sale terminals furthermore track purchases made and adjust a database of store inventory accordingly. Some point-of-sale terminals print commodity information about the purchased commodity name and its price on a receipt after adding advertising information such as commodity (or goods) advertisement, an announcement about an event which is scheduled to take place in the future, or the like thereto. Recently, there are also cases where, aside from the advertising information, information such as a coupon ticket or a lottery ticket is added to the print out. Thus, in many cases, each point-of-sale terminal must be a complete data processing system in order to perform all the functions required.
Many businesses use one form of point-of-sale input/output (I/O) device or another to assist in the purchase or sale of an item or to complete a sales transaction. There are many different communication interfaces used by the point-of-sale I/O devices. The many different interfaces require point-of-sale system units to be designed with one or two specific I/O communication interfaces, or a complex changeable connector implementation. Supporting these I/O communication interfaces results in large point-of-sale system units.